Eidos Outsourced Those Deux Ex: HR Boss Fights

[IamLEAM1983]

- There are four boss fights in Deus EX: HR, each ranging from anywhere between 1-5 minutes.

- Total amount of time spent for boss fights = 20 minutes, max.

- The game lasts for about 25 - 40 hours. Let's say 20 hours.

- The boss fights amount to 1.67% of the entire game, worst case scenario.

- Now here's the best part - people are complaining about it. Not criticizing, not pointing out a flaw, we're talking about full-on bitching here.

This.

Honestly. Even Jaron Namir is easy to beat if you know how. Barrett was a cakewalk if you remember to use all the cannisters and grenades to your advantage, and all Federova requires is that you reember to pack a heavy rifle and your oldschool circle-strafing skills.

 

[Ellen of Kitten]

So I'm not terribly far, but I liked what boss battles I've been a part of. I'm playing through the game trying to "Ghost" each area, and when I reached Barret, yeah- I got hung up. But maybe because I've played Metal Gear games, I accepted that there was conflict in front of me, and that this game was so multilayered as to have it and play good enough to allow it.

I've had fun. The boss fights don't deserve the bad press.

 

[Luke5515]

Those fights were...well I figured out the strategy and it was less than a boss fight. It was less than a stealth encounter with 4 guards. It was pitiful. Even on Hard mode, the exact same strategy worked flawlessly.
I don't care if I can't be stealthy, I'll deal, if I can't enjoy a boss fight, that's a different story.

 

[Venereus]

DLC is needed to fix this

Agreed!

Sad day indeed when gamers ask for paid DLC to do what patches should do for free...

 

[wolfister]

This sounds like a job for the Spanish Inquisition!

Well, I didn't expect somebody mentioning the Spanish Inquisition.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

 

[The Lugz]

1-5 minutes is only if you already know how to beat a boss, otherwise you're stuck staring at the "oh so helpful" loading screen. given the game took ~20 hours the first battle, for me, took 1.5 hours 90% of that time spent loading and subsequently getting butchered in seconds just because I was a hacker/meelee/pacifist.
when a game tempts you to rege-quit it kind of defeats the purpose.
inb4 "there's the easy mode"; some players see it as something worse than rage-quting

gotta agree on the easy-mode, i played a fair few games on easy-mode then realized what a bad thing i was doing cheating myself out of a difficult play through that made me immerse myself and really think what i should do

ive set the difficulty to max on every game since my ps2, because if i don't then i haven't really played it have i ? i just looked at pretty pictures and pressed buttons

 

[The Lugz]

1-5 minutes is only if you already know how to beat a boss, otherwise you're stuck staring at the "oh so helpful" loading screen. given the game took ~20 hours the first battle, for me, took 1.5 hours 90% of that time spent loading and subsequently getting butchered in seconds just because I was a hacker/meelee/pacifist.
when a game tempts you to rege-quit it kind of defeats the purpose.
inb4 "there's the easy mode"; some players see it as something worse than rage-quting

gotta agree on the easy-mode, i played a fair few games on easy-mode then realized what a bad thing i was doing cheating myself out of a difficult play through that made me immerse myself and really think what i should do

ive set the difficulty to max on every game since my ps2, because if i don't then i haven't really played it have i ? i just looked at pretty pictures and pressed buttons

 

[GreyJedi]

In the course of that five-minute clip, Kruszewski refers to himself as a "shooter guy" and explains that Eidos Montreal essentially gave his firm the tech and gameplay design of the game, then let Grip craft boss fights based on that alone.

While I've yet to play the game myself, I believe this would be the main reason why the boss fights alledgedly suck. You can't have an immersive, well-thought-out bossfight if some other company just got the tech details to work it out and do it. Eidos remains responsibly for the slip-up, seeing as it was their job to (at the very least) provide them with additional information to flesh out the boss-characters, or (even better) to actually integrate the bossfights themselves into the main story line, thus obliging them to introduce the bosses earlier on, etc, etc, etc...

TL;DR-version: it's still Eidos' fault, not the subcontractor's. (Do correct me if I'm wrong. Everything I've posted here is based on the reviews I've seen so far.)

 

[Drake666]

DLC is needed to fix this

Oohhh, nice idea ! I don't think it would be difficult to implement...

 

[Drake666]

DLC is needed to fix this

Agreed!

Sad day indeed when gamers ask for paid DLC to do what patches should do for free...

You know that DLC doesn't assume you have to pay for it, right ?
It just mean Downloadable Content... there exist free DLC.

A patch would change the game for everyone, without anyone having anything to say about it, while a DLC could be optional.

 

[Triality]

I went combat build every time, just cause I love the feel of the combat, it's very smooth and tactile (and this is the PC version I'm referring to), so boss battles were just par for the course.

I have criticisms about the middle boss fight with the fembot but they really shouldn't have outsourced the most important milestone in the game. Yahtzee made the best statement on this: Boss fights should be a final exam of what you learned up to that point.

Grip entertainment deserves criticism for not taking stealth builds into consideration. It was jock douchebag laziness to go for balls-out-full-hard-on-erection-stars-and-stripes combat as the only solution for them. Still I was a combat and hack build, so I got through with some challenge. they were fun, but I truly feel the stealth builders' pain. Their criticisms are VERY warranted.

 

[tetron]

I'd definitely say they both dropped the ball. On one hand even for what they were the boss fights were a big disappointment, but on the other hand they shouldn't have been what they were and that's on eidos. They even felt somewhat slapped into it. For instance on the second boss fight in the computer room, after you beat the boss she's lying there dying and someone even hints that you could save her. But it doesn't go anywhere, you start talking about something else and the boss is put out of sight and out of mind.

Difficulty aside, the boss fights were a disappointment because no matter what you were while playing through the game, when that boss fight came around you were a hardcore killin man. That's not what I played the first one for, and it's not what I played this one for. Plenty of crappy fps games out there for this stuff.

The game itself ? Yeah the game is fucking amazing, the boss battles were the only thing I didn't like about it.

 

[For.I.Am.Mad]

The boss fights were the last straw for me. Everything in that game has been done in other games but better. It combines all these elements and none of them rise above mediocrity. Also the game just doesn't have that special 'something' that keeps you invested.

Do all the rationalizing you want but I have a feeling there's going to be a lot 'average Joe's'(with average to great health) who won't put up with it.

 

[maturin]

I have a feeling this sort of thing happens quite often with AA titles. If anyone higher than an intern did any of the level design in most of the MW2 levels, I'll eat my hat. It's all farmed out and chased by bucketloads of cash.